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Families that have alcohol and mental health problems: a template for partnership working

SCIE Guide 2

By Patricia Kearney, Enid Levin, Gwen Rosen and Mary Sainsbury

Published June 2003

About this guide

This guide is about delivering high quality,
coordinated services to families with parents who
misuse alcohol or who have mental health problems.
It recognises that promoting the well-being of
children and keeping them safe should be achieved,
wherever possible, by providing support for parents
in bringing up their children and by ensuring that
children do not take on excessive or inappropriate
caring roles in their family.

Purpose

The guide encourages local authorities to adopt a protocol to further good practice and offers a template for agencies to use to develop better, more family-centred approaches to working with families with parents with alcohol and mental health problems.

Audience

The guide is aimed at senior managers in children's services and adults' services in local authorities. It is also aimed at senior managers in other services that may be involved with families with alcohol and mental health problems such as local health services.

Messages from the guide

Getting your protocol underway

Before developing your protocol:

identify the desired outcomes

identify key players

involve service users and their supporters

identify relevant legislation and accompanying guidance

identify what is already in place and what still needs integrating

identify any gaps in working together

Features of a protocol for partnership working

Include instructions and role requirements. Include
instructions and requirements about people's
roles and tasks to relieve the 'Where
does my job end?' anxiety that many workers
experience. For example, you may want to
include an appendix with addresses and contact
numbers for all teams and agencies involved
in the care of families with drug and or
alcohol problems, along with a referral flow
chart.

Be authoritative. Workers
must know where the authority for the instructions
and requirements comes from. For example, you
could include the signatures of all the relevant
chief executives, and give the protocol the status
of a 'must do' document.

Include legislation, policy and procedure. Collaborative
working must take account of the law and any
related guidance and must be linked to local
policies, protocols and procedures.

Be easy to use. Make sure
the language is in plain English and is of an
appropriate tone. Do not assume that all staff
involved will know all terms - explain each one
the first time or include a glossary. Also make
sure the design and layout is user-friendly.
It may well be worth investing in having this
professionally done as this will also add to
the status of the protocol.

Help people to think and act differently. An
effective protocol should be specific about new
ways of working and address key issues. For example,
you may want to acknowledge that for some cases,
departmental financial issues will cross boundaries
and advise that negotiation take place away from
the family and cost sharing be considered.

Have a user-led approach. The
protocol should at all times have the welfare
of families in mind and encourage workers to
work together and negotiate boundaries for the
good of the families.

Be implemented. Lastly, once
the protocol is written, you must get it out
to the relevant people, get them using it, measure
its effectiveness and keep it up-to-date. This
is no easy task and time and effort should
be spend on getting this part of it right. After
all there is no point in having a good protocol
if no one uses it.